


1946

by LadySeishou



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: 31_days, Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-01
Updated: 2005-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-14 14:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySeishou/pseuds/LadySeishou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The wheel of life turns and the dream continues...  an alterante universe or a tale of reincarnation, Shindou as an WWII American serviceman delivers food and supplies to a Japanese village...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1946

**Author's Note:**

> Written originally for the LiveJournal community.   
> AU Theme: October 1 / A screaming comes across the sky  
> Characters: “Bright Boy” (Shindou Hikaru), Buddhist monk (Touya Akira)

1946

 

* * *

 

Hence one whose fire is burned out is reborn   
through the tendencies in mind;   
according to his thoughts he enters life.   
But linked by the fire with the Self,   
this life leads to a world of recompense. 

Prashna Upanishad 

 

* * *

 

“Goddamnit.”

Bright Boy wrestled with the wheel until he was pretty damn sure that all four tires were rolling along in the mucky grooves again, well as good as any government issued vehicle with an eighty-inch wheel base was going to fit into what was basically a god forsaken goat trail and what was suppose to pass for a road on the goddamn island. 

He gave the truck a little more gas to get it going. And one of the cans in the back was rolling around. Maybe two. But it was getting near noon telling by the sun overhead and no time to stop and check the supplies. Sweat was tickling down his back and soaking his shirt and he needed to be back by Six-Teen-Hun-dred-Hours Sarge said, spitting like he did when he was Sir-Ree-Us. Shit, Cowboy was right, the man needed to get drunk and get himself a girlfriend.

Well… damn… shit… the jeep bucked again… maybe he needed something more than his right hand too. It had been a while.

And it wasn’t like the local girls were hard to look at… but… well he had other things on his mind.

John Wayne was still riding him about finding him and Cowboy scrounging through the trash near the Officer’s Mess looking for bottle caps. It was the best thing that Cowboy could think of after Bright Boy showed him how to draw the lines in the wet dirt the way that the monk had showed him. The lines that crisscrossed each other like map coordinates. Nineteen by nineteen. And they needed the bottle caps to mark out enemy camps and battlefronts. John Wayne had hit him on the head with his Time Magazine the one with the cover of Dr. Einstein on it before telling them they would probably find more bottle caps at the canteen. And they did.

Damn. Another deep rut. Damn road. Damn truck. He almost bit his tongue that time. 

He pulled on the wheel right then left and came down hard on his butt. There wasn’t much padding between him and the US Army regulation seat. His backend was going to be as sore as when his Pop got after him with his belt.

They played the game for almost three hours, him and Cowboy until John Wayne came by on his way to chow. Then later all three of them laid out bottle caps in the dirt until it got too dark to see. 

And even then, laying in his bunk, staring up at the places in the ceiling where the wood planks were suppose to meet up together, in the shadows and knotholes, he could imagine the moves of the game laid out over his head, invasion and surrender and always the same thing afterwards… the monk’s knowing smile. Then the monk would show Bright Boy all the mistakes that he’d made during the game, better moves. He was no better at the game than a kid.

But Bright Boy was going to make the monk look at him today. Make the monk see him as someone that he would have to take seriously. 

Well someday anyway.

The “road” forked up ahead and Bright Boy knew that one way went back down to the beach, a two hour drive and the other went up the mountain. He would be in the village in a half hour. Maybe more. Maybe less if he could pick up a little speed before he started up the steep road. 

And the damn road bent crazily up ahead. He turned left and then right before noticing the dark curl of smoke rising up over the trees. He slowed down, he wanted to stop, to figure things out. Smoke almost always meant trouble but if he stopped now he was pretty damn sure that he wouldn’t get the jeep going again any time soon, stuck in the mud, deep in the ruts.

He looked up again, the smoke looked close. 

Maybe as close as the village.

Shit.

 

* * *

 

The road got a little wider as it came into the village, a place that was really just a ragged bunch of wood shacks built around an old dried up well and a small cleared patch of dirt where the women grew sweet potatoes and long white radishes. 

The smoke was thicker here but as far as Bright Boy could tell it wasn’t coming from any of the shacks. That only left one more place…

The truck pulled forward with a jarring start as he gave it more gas. The temple was up ahead, a place of worship for their Buddha god, pretty enough with its white paper doors and fancy wood roof that curved up on the corners like a woman’s skirt in the movies. 

Pretty enough.

But Bright Boy wondered where their Buddha was now as his temple burned, fire eating through the thin paper doors, licking up along the exposed wood beams of the roof. As he drove in closer, steering around the women, their faces smudged with ash, getting around the men, black with soot and the kids holding anything that could carry water, he decided then and there that God and Buddha, both, had turned a blond eye on this place, letting it burn…

He stopped and climbed out, spotting two of the orphan kids that the monk had taken in a couple of months earlier, Asumi and Yuuta, both clinging to each other looking like lost monkeys. They saw him climb out of the truck and came running and he caught himself checking his pockets for chocolate bars.

Asumi was first, fast on her long thin legs, wrapping her arms around his waist, hiding her dirty face against his shirt. She was speaking Japanese and crying and crying. Yuuta came then, Yuuta who always had a smile for everyone and everything despite all that the boy must have seen during the war, Yuuta was crying too, his face all snot and black ash tears. He wrapped himself around Asumi.

“What the hell happened?” he yelled at one of the women standing close, still and stiff like a fence post. “Where’s the monk?”

Asumi began to wail louder. Yuuta too.

“Where’s the monk?” he shouted again, ready to get his M-1 out of the Jeep to shoot someone. “Where’s the monk?”

An ancient old man shuffled closer, his white beard gray with smoke, his watery eyes staring out of the ash mask that he wore. “Monk inside.”

He couldn’t have heard that right. 

“Tell me where the monk is goddamnit!” There was no way that the monk was inside that burning hell. He pulled the girl off, shoving her aside, ignoring the way she staggered back, Yuuta still clinging to her arm and leg. “Where is he?”

The old man pointed at the building, almost nothing more than a roof of flame and black smoke. “Other boy inside. Monk go in. Get boy.”

It was only then Bright Boy noticed that Tetsuo was missing, Asumi and Yuuta’s shadow. He had come to think of the kids as the Three Musketeers. It was always the three of them, orphans, but kind of a family now. “The monk is in there with the boy?” he asked stupidly because he knew the answer.

The old man nodded. But Bright Boy was already moving, standing now at the doorway, blinking, his eyes watering, the heat of the fire hot and hurting on his face. There was no way that the Monk and the boy could still be alive in that burning hell…

And he will never know why he did it. It was stupid. He knew it. It was the most stupid thing that he would ever do his whole life but still he did it. He covered his mouth and nose with the back of his arm and ran into the burning temple.

 

* * *

 

He staggered like a drunk as wave after wave of heat poured down on him. The fire burned everything, including the air. That and the black smoke made it impossible to breathe let alone to try to yell for the monk. 

Somehow like it was a normal, everyday kind of day. 

“Monk? I want to talk some more. Let’s try that game again. I got something new to show you.”

Now it felt as if the heat reached in and stole all the words right out of his mouth. He didn’t even have the spit to try.

Somehow he did it anyway.

“Monk! Damnit! Monk!”

A beam fell, eaten from the inside, glowing with red evil eyes, scattering bright sparks like rain. He was running out of time if he wasn’t already a dead man.

“Monk!”

It was Tetsuo who finally answered him. Tetsuo who was shaking and crying and bent over the dark shape of the monk lying on the floor. Bright Boy tried pulling him away from the monk, pushing him in the direction of the door. 

“Get out of here!”

The boy shook his head, refusing to leave. “My fault! My fault! I smoke GI cigarette! God kill me now.” 

Bright Boy was trying to get the monk’s arm up and over his shoulder. “It won’t be God damnit boy. It’ll be me that will beat you till you wished you were dead. Understand me? You’re going to see the back side of my hand unless you get the hell out of here. Now!” He didn’t have any more time to spare for the brat. The monk was starting to come around, coughing and wheezing…

“Monk!” 

The monk’s breathing didn’t sound so good but it was music to his ears. He tried pulling the man to his feet but the monk pulled his arm away and fell again, collapsed on the floor. He was still conscious, thank God, and shaking his head.

“What the hell are you doing? We got to get out of here!”

The monk pushed away Bright Boy’s hand. “Please.” His voice was raw, strained. It was hard to hear him. “Take this!”

The monk was trying to push the damn game board toward Bright Boy, the fancy one cut from thick wood, made like a small table with short fat legs. “Take this.”

“Are you out of your damn mind? Are you crazy? Forget that! We got to get the hell out of here!”

But the monk continued to shake his head. “You must save it. Please David, you must take the goban. I will follow you.”

More of the roof collapsed next to them. Bright Boy looked around them and saw Tetsuo, his eyes big as saucers.

“Goddamnit! Goddamnit!” He picked up the heavy goban and tried to reach down for the monk’s arm but the monk said something in fast Japanese to the boy. He said something back to the monk who shook his head. The boy came over to them and pulled on Bright Boy’s arm.

“We go. We go.”

Bright Boy wanted to hand the table over to the boy but decided that the kid wouldn’t be able to manage the weight trying to get to the door…

“Go David. Take the boy. Take the goban. Go.”

More of the ceiling came down. Tetsuo screamed, beating at the thin shirt he wore, covered with holes where the fire had burned through. Bright Boy leaned down to look the man in the face. Scared green eyes, watering from the heat and smoke smoke met sad dark eyes, wise and old, eyes that seem to see through to the very bottom of his soul, reading all that he was and that he could be.

“I’ll be back!” he said.

The monk smiled, his eyes bright now, like when he sat down to begin a new game.

“We will meet again David. I know it.”

Bright Boy nodded. “Count on it.”

 

* * *

 

It had taken four of the villagers to hold Bright Boy down, to keep him from going back into the temple. They held him, face down in the dirt until he heard the gut twisting sound of the walls collapsing, a great sigh, a wave of heat, smoke, choking smoke and the metal taste of blood and grit and salt in his mouth.

They let him up but he couldn’t look, wouldn’t look. He heard the kids and women crying. He sat up and coughed smoke, spit, rubbed his hand over his face wondering that he didn’t hurt worse. The goban was laying there next to him, its legs in the air like some kind of dead animal. He reached over to turn it over, making a bloody mess of it. 

“David-san.”

Bright Boy looked up at Tetsuo and saw raw pain in the boy’s eyes. And guilt. The kind that scarred the soul. It was something the boy would live with for the rest of his life. 

The monk was dead.

But who was he to say anything about it, add any more to that heavy burden? He had his own load he carried.

“Get some of the men, Tetsuo, and get the supplies. In the back of the truck. I got to get going, get back.”

“Okay, David-san. Okay.”

He stood up, not looking still. He brushed dirt off his pants, felt the little holes burned into shirt, into the legs of his pants, thought of the paperwork that he would need to do to put in a requisition for a new shirt…

The men made quick work of it and the women were making neat stacks of the provisions, chattering away, chattering like they always did. He climbed into the truck and sat down behind the wheel. Turned the key in the ignition. Anything to keep himself from turning around and looking.

He knew already what he would see, the black and charred ruins. Nothing any different about it than he’d seen a thousand times already. 

It was time to go and by God he was never coming back. 

“David-san!” 

“David-san!”

It was Yuuta nd his brother Heihachi. Between them, they carried the Go table, big and awkward in their small hands. “You forget this,” Yuuta says.

He shook his head. “That belongs here Yuuta. That belongs to the monk.” He blinked, choked, coughed. “It belongs here. You keep it. Sorry about mess. The blood.”

The monk had always taken such care with it.

“What?” the boy asked, shaking his head. “No blood, David-san! It good and clean! Like monk keep it. You see! You take!”

Bright Boy looked down at the table. 

It was true. There wasn’t any kind of stain anywhere on the table. The kids had cleaned it up somehow. Good. That was good. He wiped his eyes. The smoke made them burn.

“I can’t take that back with me, Yuuta. You keep it, okay? You keep it.”

Bright Boy stepped on the gas and drove back down the mountain.

 

owari


End file.
